Zenoss and the Art of Network Monitoring

Now, let's set up our Linux systems so they can talk to the Zenoss
server. After installing and configuring the operating systems on our
other Linux servers, install the Net-SNMP package on each using the
following command on the Ubuntu server:

sudo apt-get install snmpd

And, on the Fedora server use:

yum install net-snmp

Once the Net-SNMP packages are installed, edit out any other lines in
the Access Control sections at the beginning of the /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf,
and add the following lines:

Do not edit out any lines beneath the last Access Control Sections. Please
note that the above is only a mildly restrictive configuration. Consult the
snmpd.conf file or the Net-SNMP documentation if you want to tighten
access. On the Ubuntu server, you also may have to change the following
line in the /etc/snmp/default file to allow SNMP to bind to anything
other than the local loopback address:

SNMPDOPTS='-Lsd -Lf /dev/null -u snmp -I -smux -p /var/run/snmpd.pid'

Installing SNMP on Windows

On the Windows server, access the Add/Remove Programs utility from the
Control Panel. Click on the Add/Remove Windows Components button on
the left. Scroll down the list of Components, check off Management
and Monitoring Tools, and click on the Details button. Check Simple
Network Management Protocol in the list, and click OK to install. Close
the Add/Remove window, and go into the Services console from
Administrative Tools in the Control Panel. Find the SNMP service in
the list, right-click on it, and click on Properties to bring up
the service properties tabs. Click on the Traps tab, and type in the
community name. In the list of Trap Destinations, add the IP address
of the Zenoss server. Now, click on the Security tab, and check off the
Send authentication trap box, enter the community name, and give it
READ-ONLY rights. Click OK, and restart the service.

Return to the Zenoss management Web page. Click the Devices link to go into
the subclass of /Devices/Servers/Windows, and on the zProperties tab,
enter the name of a domain admin account and password in the zWinUser
and zWinPassword fields. This account gives Zenoss access to the Windows
Management Instrumentation (WMI) on your Windows systems. Make sure to
click Save at the bottom of the page before navigating away.

Adding Devices into Zenoss

Now that our systems have SNMP, we can add them into Zenoss. Devices can
be added individually or by scanning the network. Let's do both. To
add our Ubuntu server into Zenoss, click on the Add Device link under
the Management navigation section. Enter the IP address of the server
and the community name. Under Device Class Path, set the selection to
/Server/Linux. You could add a variety of other hardware, software and
Zenoss information on this page before adding a system, but at a minimum,
an IP address name and community name is required (Figure 1). Click the
Add Device button, and the discovery process runs. When the results
are displayed, click on the link to the new device to access it.

Figure 1. Adding a Device into Zenoss

To scan the network for devices, click the Networks link under Browse By
section of the navigation menu. If your network is not in the list, add it
using CIDR notation. Once added, check the box next to your network and
use the drop-down arrow to click on the Select Discover Devices option.
You will see a similar results page as the one from before. When complete,
click on the links at the bottom of the results page to access the new
devices. Any device found will be placed in the /Discovered class. Because
we should have discovered the Fedora server and the Windows server, they
should be moved to the /Devices/Servers/Linux and /Devices/Servers/Windows
classes, respectively. This can be done from each server's Status tab by
using the main drop-down list and selecting Manage→Change Class.

If all has gone well, so far we have a functional SNMP monitoring system
that is able to monitor heartbeat/availability (Figure 2) and performance
information (Figure 3) on our systems. You can customize other various
Status and Performance Monitors to meet your needs, but here we will
use the default localhost monitors.

Figure 2. The Zenoss Dashboard

Figure 3. Performance data is collected almost immediately after discovery.

Hi, I'm Ty Hahn and one of the biggest fan of LJ.
I really enjoyed this article. While reading, I found a tiny mistake and that's why I'm here.
On page 73, the SNMP configuration file for Ubuntu to change must be '/etc/default/snmpd' instead of '/etc/snmp/default'.
I hope this helps to save somebody's precious time.
Thanks.

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